Components of landscaping

There are five basic components to landscape designing that, when applied properly, should result in a well balanced, pleasing landscape. Color, line, form, texture, and scale are woven together into one landscaping fabric in which no single component dominates the rest. Let's break each landscaping component down separately.

Color is very important to landscape design. Color can add drama to your landscape, or inspire a feeling of relaxation. While color has the most immediate effect when viewing a landscape, it should always be considered along with the other landscaping components such as form and texture in order to achieve balance in the landscape.

For a more in depth discussion of color, let's refer to the basic color wheel. Red, yellow and blue are the primary colors of the wheel. The secondary colors are made from combining two of the primary colors to get orange, green and purple. When two secondary colors are combined we get tertiary colors, ie; yellow/green, blue/green, blue/violet, red/violet, red/orange and yellow/orange.

Colors can be used to define one landscape area from the next, but how you combine them can mean the difference between a shocking transition in your landscape or a transition that flows. For example, if you wanted to use a landscape color scheme featuring red and yellow, the secondary color orange, and the tertiary colors red/orange and yellow/orange can provide smoother transitions across the landscape.

The concept of line in landscaping refers to flow, the way the eyes are drawn along the length of the landscape. Some people consider line to also refer to the outline of the landscape plants. Line is achieved through the use of plants, trees and shrubs of differing heights. The line itself has a direct effect on flow of the landscape. A straight line draws the viewer's eye directly to the desired focal point of the landscape, while a curved or meandering line pulls the eye along gently in a relaxed manner until the focal point of the landscape is finally reached.

Form and line work closely together to affect the flow of your landscape. Form typically refers to the shape of a plant. Some basic forms of landscape plants are oval, upright, columns, spreading and weeping.

Texture refers to the look and feel of the surface of your landscape plants. Textures can be soft or rough, coarse or fine, shiny or dull, and everything in between. Textures can be used to create depth and interest in your landscape design.

Scale and size are sometimes confused with each other. Size simply refers to the actual measurement of an object, while scale refers to the size of an object in relation to the other objects within your landscape.

A delicate balance of these five basic components of landscape design can be applied to create pleasing landscapes of every theme and style.